Coming soon: President Barack Obama, who’s expected to campaign [in Florida] at least twice before Election Day. First Lady Michelle Obama — more popular than her husband — will likely visit Florida as well, in addition to the ad she cut for Clinton that’s currently airing on Florida radio.

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in panic mode. Full panic mode,” said Leslie Wimes, a South Florida-based president of the Democratic African-American Women Caucus.

“They have a big problem because they thought Obama and Michelle saying, ‘Hey, go vote for Hillary’ would do it. But it’s not enough,” Wimes said, explaining that too much of the black vote in Florida is anti-Trump, rather than pro-Clinton. “In the end, we don’t vote against somebody. We vote for somebody.”

Part of the problem Clinton faces is that Obama, the actual black president, is the toughest of acts to follow. Obama enjoyed support from 95 percent of Florida’s black voters in both 2012 and 2008, according to exit polls.

“In the end, we don’t vote against somebody. We vote for somebody.” Sounds like a plan! If your plan is to ensure that the Supreme Court remains in the hands of the rightwing Federalist Society for another two decades, and that the lower federal bench, which after three decades of Federalist Society control is no longer in that stranglehold.

Guess the “we” who, in the end, don’t vote against somebody but instead vote for somebody, are just fine with the Supreme Court’s killing of the Voting Rights Act; the Court’s killing of federal-court habeas corpus review of state-court and state-prosecutor actions wayyy beyond what the 1996 jurisdictional statute they purport to just be interpreting (they’ve actually rewritten it); the Court’s singlehanded creation of a legal doctrine called “qualified immunity” (by their own admission not based on any statute but instead solely on their preferred policy) that exempts all law enforcement people, including (especially) prosecutors (including those who falsify evidence and those who withhold clearly exculpatory evidence) from any civil lawsuit liability, like, ever.

And the possibility of the Supreme Court upholding new campaign-finance laws—federal and state. Including state judicial elections or appointments. And state attorneys general and local DAs.

You think black lives matter, but you don’t care enough about who in the federal judicial branch is making policy that goes such a long way toward deciding whether or not black lives matter? Or, you don’t know that it the judiciary—and particularly the federal judiciary—at least as much as Congress that determines the relevant policy, and that the person who determines the makeup of the Supreme court and he lower federal courts, and therefore determines how much latitude state court judges and state prosecutors and state and local police have, is either that person whom you won’t vote for because you’re not enthusiastic about her, or that the person whom you don’t want to just vote against?

Ditto for millennials in general. Most of the African-Americans saying that are, best as I can tell, millennials, leading me to wonder where they were during the primaries, when African-Americans in the South effectively determined the outcome of the primary contest. Was Sanders not someone they could vote for? Apparently not, so I guess they just didn’t vote. Which should, maybe, suggest to them that if there are things that matter to them that will be determined by whom the next president is, they should ditch their high-mindedness and vote for the one of the two candidates that they would rather see making those decisions who will be making those decisions (court appointments, for example).

But its by means just African-American millennials. It’s millennials generally. It’s just the in thing this year. The fashion. Which is good, to a point. But not beyond that.

I say: Heck, millennials, just tell reporters and pollsters whatever you want about how cool you are to vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, or to not vote (even for Senate and House, and state legislators). It’s certainly the millennial in thing to support Johnson or Stein, or not vote. And it will be unless and until President Trump, say, fulfills his promise to appoint a justice like Antonin Scalia to fill Scalia’s seat on the Court. But if that’s not what you want to actually see, then vote. For Clinton.

It’s one thing to threaten to cast a vanity vote, but quite another to actually cast one, ceding to others, without an iota of input, the actual decision about who will become president.

Care about consumer and employee protections (including the Supreme Court’s series of 5-4 opinions rewriting the Federal Arbitration Act in favor of … well, not consumers and employees), and finance-industry regulations? Really? But you’re fine with the prospect of President Trump and all those someones he’ll appoint? Because you only vote for someone—the candidate herself or himself. You won’t vote against someone. Or, apparently, all those someones the candidate will appoint once in the White House.

Clinton, her husband, and her campaign do seem finally, and ever so belatedly, to have gotten the message you’ve sent through the polls. But she doesn’t seem to fully know what to do about it. Yes, it’s great that she’s finally campaigning on the Party platform—and even doing so with Bernie! And her most potent surrogate besides Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, is becoming active after (what I’m guessing) was a period of about seven weeks when Clinton and her campaign didn’t want these two prominently campaigning for her. Suburban moderate women would have been thrilled about what platform planks these two would have highlighted. But, y’know, all those name Establishment Republicans whose endorsements she was trying for (successfully, for the most part) might not have happened.

And since this election cycle is nothing if not one in which to highlight support of name Establishment folks, that seemed to Clinton, her husband and her campaign as the route to the White House. Even if everyone else was stupefied by it.

Well, almost everyone else. But Clinton, her husband and her campaign really, really do finally understand this (even if Paul Krugman does not and still thinks Clinton’s failure to campaign intensely, or at all, on the Party platform for six weeks, and to not herself respond immediately and very publicly to the late-August Clinton Foundation pay-to-play meme). Sort of, anyway; Clinton still won’t tell the public about the Mercers or the oil-and-gas billionaires who will in effect be making these appointments—nor, apparently, even wants Sanders and Warren to do so.

But this week there does seem to be real progress. Or at least it had seemed that way. But today there is this, from Greg Sargent:

Clinton may have erred in calling “half” of Trump’s supporters “deplorables,” but there’s little question she wants this broader national argument. Of course, in some ways, Trump might also want this debate. He obviously sees expressing outrage about Clinton’s “deplorables” and “implicit bias” comments as a way to juice up his base by playing to white grievance.

But Trump also needs to improve his appeal among college educated whites, who are already convinced that Trump is either personally biased against minorities or is running a campaign designed to appeal to bigotry, which could be one reason his unfavorable numbers remain so high among those voters. And in this context, it’s worth appreciating that there’s a basic political imbalance underlying this debate: It energizes the base for both candidates, but it arguably could limit the broader appeal of only one of them.

As Democratic strategists have pointed out, by fully confronting Trump’s bigotry, and by talking about systemic racism as a continuing societal problem, Clinton may be able to engage core Dem voter groups in ways that tip the composition of the electorate in her direction on election day. It is always possible that engaging this debate might alienate some swing voters. But it seems more likely at this point that a continuing national focus on Trump’s racism could further alienate from him those college educated whites that Clinton hopes to win among, which would make her the first Democrat in over half a century to pull that off.

Either way, Clinton appears fully committed to this debate at this point, and most signs are that Democrats broadly see this orientation of the party as a short-term and long-term positive. So she probably won’t stop taking about it anytime soon.

Presumably this is because there are a few people hiding in caves with not even radio transmission who don’t know that this has been debated intensely for the last 16 months. Or who want to hear still more debate about it. Maybe that’s the ticket. Then again, maybe not.

But … whatever. As always, it’s only the Republicans who understand and campaign on this. Or at least who campaign on this–even if they’re not the only candidates who understand this.

Progressives of all generations are tired of this. Really. We are. Although by and large, it’s only millennials who plan to play with matches.

____

NOTE: *That line is intended as a takeoff on the (I guess no longer) famous line that Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager, James Carville, posted to his office wall to remind himself of what to focus on above all else during the campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The “stupid” being a reference to … himself. As in: Remember, James, you idiot. It’s the economy that should be the main focus of the candidate’s campaign, not the side stuff (like culture wars issues). That campaign was during a recession.

After reading the first comment in the Comments thread I realized that I needed to explain that rather than presume that this would be understood, as it would have been, say, even a decade ago. Oh, dear.

Added 9/29 at 5:07 p.m.

**I just added this link to the Wikipedia article about “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Comments (51)

nihil obstet

September 29, 2016 4:43 pm

The best way to communicate with people who have reservations about you is to call them stupid. That’s the trick!

Yes, good agency appointments. Like Eric Holder, who went from a law firm with large banks as clients to the DoJ where he couldn’t find any fraud at large banks, and then returned to the law firm. Like Timothy Geithner, who made sure the banks remained profitable but protected ordinary people from the moral hazard of not being responsible to the last penny of the subprime loans that the bankers had sold them.

The judicial appointments — good to remember that only Republicans take the “advise and consent” responsibility in the Constitution seriously. Democrats are entirely too helpless to get their own nominees for the lower levels of the bench confirmed, even when they have a Congressional majority and too helpless to stop Republican nominees to the Supreme Court.

The Democrats would be in better position on racism if the current Democratic president hadn’t spent so much time in 2008 claiming that supporters of the current candidate supported her instead of him because they were racists. And if Clinton supporters had not so very shamefully tried to smear Sanders as a racist and sexist. The millennials almost certainly didn’t appreciate that.

You’re seeing far clearer statements promising reform than I am, and I suspect, than most people. Look at Clinton’s team and tell me you think they represent progressive action. Really?

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 4:58 pm

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. “It’s the court and agency appointments, stupid” was intended as a takeoff on the famous (or formerly famous, apparently) line that Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager, James Carville, posted to his office wall to remind himself of what to focus on above all else during the campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The “stupid” being a reference to … himself. As in: Remember, James, you idiot. It’s the economy that should be the main focus of the candidate’s campaign, not the side stuff (like culture wars issues). That campaign was during a recession.

At first, I couldn’t figure out what you were referring to by that first sentence. You must be too young to remember the 1992 campaign, because the Carville line was so famous for years and years after it.

Jack

September 29, 2016 4:45 pm

Hard to say where to start in response to this broad based post. Maybe the obvious point of departure is this quote, ” “In the end, we don’t vote against somebody. We vote for somebody.” The political ignorance of that statement suggests that Ms Wimes has a hidden agenda in making such a defeatist comment. Maybe she just wants the Democratic Party to not take the black vote for granted, which has been a recent theme of some political analysts. At least that would make some sense, but she would be more effective on the point to simply say it more directly.

“But it seems more likely at this point that a continuing national focus on Trump’s racism could further alienate from him those college educated whites…” Yes, focus on Trump’s short comings not those of his admirers.
He’s deplorable and he attracts deplorable supporters, to be sure, but not all of them are so. And there’s no advantage in attacking the entire group or any part of it.

“Clinton may have erred in calling “half” of Trump’s supporters “deplorables,” but there’s little question she wants this broader national argument.” That’s putting it lightly, unless she just doesn’t care to even try to capture some of that vote. Chastising any group of voters is certainly not a winning strategy. And deplorable isn’t even the right word in this case. There is a large segment of the voting public that has been voting against its own economic self interest for a long time. They vote based on fear, ignorance, prejudice or some combination of the three. And the Democratic Party has made n o good effort to educate that segment of the voters. Maybe some large portion is so ignorant (or stupid) that they simply can’t see past the end of their noses, but the Dems have made no good effort to highlight the stupidity of voting for people who persistently do not represent one’s own economic security. Otherwise Paul Ryan, others like him, wouldn’t get re-elected.

“Got that? It’s the court and agency appointments, stupid.” Do you truly think that voters, outside of your small circle of friends, are that sophisticated? No way, Jose. Supreme Court, maybe. But even there it would be needed to point out the damage that Scalia and his cohorts have done to the individual citizen. Federal agency appointments? A waste of campaign time and funds.

What should be done? Exactly what we saw Clinton finally do on Monday. And lot’s more of it. And by a broader range of what we’re calling “surrogates” lately. And not only by Bernie Sanders. Where the devil are the Democratic senators and mayors and the few governors that there are? HRC can focus on what good policies she will bring to the White House, and in some limited detail. All the others should be speaking up loudly and often about what a dirt bag Trump is now and has always been. His own words should be thrown back in pejorative tone. I think that the average Trump supporter can reasonably ask, if Trump is so bad why are so few Democratic leaders saying so on a public forum?

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 5:19 pm

By all means, Clinton should focus on Trump’s shortcomings, as well as on the Dem Party platform planks. But those shortcomings are by no means just race/xenophobia thing–which the public knows about. At the debate, she focused on things that the public did NOT know about, and that’s a key reason why it was such a successful debate for her.

But apparently huge numbers of Dem-leaning voters, especially millennials, don’t get that it’s not just the one person but also slew of persons appointed by that one person that will make a huge difference, including very possibly, to their own lives. It’s bizarre that millennials, including African-American ones, don’t think it matters who will fill Supreme Court and lower-court vacancies, and union members don’t care about that either or about who heads the Labor Dept. and is nominated to the NLRB, and … etc.

If you think John Roberts and Samuel Alito are fine as Supreme Court justices, then, great, vote for Johnson or Stein or don’t vote. If you don’t think they’re fine justices, why would you not vote Clinton because you don’t have OTHER reasons to vote FOR her. Isn’t that reason enough?

Warren

September 29, 2016 4:52 pm

I wonder how much one has to donate to the Clinton Foundation to get a seat on the Supreme Court.

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 5:06 pm

Less than the Mercers are donating to be able to choose the nominees.

nihil obstet

September 29, 2016 5:12 pm

@Beverly Mann

I remember the line. As you say, the “stupid” was a reference to himself. I guess I didn’t follow that you were arguing that the campaign itself should be about appointments. “I’ll appoint good people”? That’s pretty banal. It would have to be, I’ll appoint an Attorney General who will prosecute corporate fraudsters, war criminals, and political corruption. My Attorney General will drop prosecutions against whistleblowers.” It might work, but it would seem better just to go for the policy. On the other hand, it’s true that it would alleviate some of the fears over, for example, the neocons that seem to be joining Clinton’s foreign policy circle.

The Supreme Court IS about policy. Is Citizens United not about policy? How about the striking down of most of the Voting Rights Act? What about court challenges to voter-ID statutes? How about blanket civil immunity for prosecutors and cops? What about the nullification of the Constitutional guarantee to the right to federal-court habeas corpus review of state-court prosecutions?

How about the effective nullification of access to court in consumer and employment cases and in civil rights cases of almost any sort other than, y’know, Second Amendment rights cases and religious discrimination cases (as long as your religion is Christian)?

You define policy very, very narrowly.

nihil obstet

September 29, 2016 6:09 pm

I’m not sure I’m more obtuse than the millennials you post about. But then I wouldn’t think that, would I?

And this plays into campaigning how? Presidential candidates have promised to appoint justices who would make their followers’ priorities the law of the land — sustain Roe v. Wade, overturn Roe v. Wade. I’ll be happy if Clinton campaigns on appointing justices who will overturn Citizens United, restore the Voting Rights Act, and so on.

I admit I’ve gotten leery of the current American political premise that we should seek to implement policy through the Supreme Court. A lot of what needs to be done can be done by legislative action, I think, although the fact that we fight lots of wars without the Constitutional requirement of a Congressional declaration indicates that I may be overly optimistic. Could we not have laws requiring corporations to have a majority of shareholders agree to any political expenditures? We could certainly have a law rendering invalid any clause in a contract for the sale of goods and services or for employment that pre-empts any rights otherwise available to consumers or employees under civil law.

Sorry I’m on a tangent, but the notion that wide swathes of policy are left by default to the Supreme Court is just outrageous in a democracy.

Anyway, I’ll agree that Clinton could campaign on appointing justices that will rule for specific policies from the federal bench. I’m not very hopeful, but it’s better than just “Well, Trump would appoint bad people.”

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 6:35 pm

Whoa. You have it backwards. A huge part of the Conservative Movement has been the Conservative Legal Movement–whose key modus operandi is to challenge the constitutionality of statutes–campaign-finance laws, gun-control laws, affirmative action policies, Obamacare–just as examples. Another huge part is to have the federal courts rewrite statutes such as the federal-court-jurisdictional (access-to-court) statutes (including an already really bad habeas corpus one), and the Federal Arbitration Act. I they’re now challenging Dodd-Frank’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

With the exception of gay-marriage prohibitions and maybe one or two other things, it’s the Conservative Legal Movement, not liberal groups, that for the last three decades have used the federal courts to make law.

If you like that, you’ll love the Trump judicial appointees. Otherwise, you won’t. Guaranteed.

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 6:43 pm

Oh, and the Voting Rights Act–they declared most of that unconstitutional on the basis of a bizarre constitutional theory conjured up for the purpose, in which they held in essence that the 14th Amendment protects STATES against discrimination by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. The 14th Amendment actually protects INDIVIDUALS against discrimination BY THE STATES.

Seriously; it was bizarre.

Warren

September 29, 2016 6:42 pm

“I’ll be happy if Clinton campaigns on appointing justices who will overturn Citizens United, restore the Voting Rights Act, and so on.

“I admit I’ve gotten leery of the current American political premise that we should seek to implement policy through the Supreme Court. A lot of what needs to be done can be done by legislative action….”

And so it is with the Citizens United action. The Campaign Finance law actually defines “person” to include corporations. All the Supremes did was say the law says what it says. (Why they could not do that with ACA subsidies I cannot fathom.)

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 6:55 pm

“The Campaign Finance law actually defines “person” to include corporations. All the Supremes did was say the law says what it says.”

Huh? I mean–well, if the statute defines “persons” to include corporations, it did so in order to make clear that the statute’s donation LIMITATIONS apply to individuals AND corporations.

So, um, no, the statute did not say that corporations have First Amendment free-speech rights.

And the corporations-are-people-who-have-First-Amendment-rights thing wasn’t even the most important part of the opinion. That honor goes to the part that held that “independent expenditures”–i.e., donations to Super PACs–can’t be limited by statute because they’re protected by the First Amendment, whether from a billionaire or a Fortune 100 corporation.

nihil obstet

September 29, 2016 6:46 pm

I’m sorry, I obviously can’t make myself clear. I don’t think policy should be surrendered to the courts. If you like what happened over the last three decades, you will prefer it to continue, only with our team instead of theirs.

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 8:35 pm

Do you really make no distinction between courts striking down or effectively rewriting legislation and courts refusing to strike down legislation and not rewriting legislation? The former is considered judicial activism–what you all surrendering policymaking to the courts, and what I call surrendering policymaking to the courts or protecting constitutional rights of individuals or some such, depending on the circumstance. The latter is the opposite.

A huge panoply of constitutional rights have been protected by Supreme Court interpretation of one or another provision in the Constitution. Free speech, for example, by striking down libel statutes or state libel common law (i.e., court-created law). Many, many rights accruing to criminal defendants–Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Sixth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, for example. Government-imposed religious observance. all sorts of basic constitutional rights. Including voting rights that are being concertedly denied by these voter-ID laws. Criminal (anti-gay) sodomy laws. Laws that criminalized interracial marriage. Poll taxes. And of course state and municipally legislated racial segregation.

You prefer pure democracy. Me? I prefer constitutional democracy. But at the heart of the Conservative Legal Movement is an aggressive remaking of huge swaths of American law under the fabricated auspices of constitutional law. Conservatives accuse liberal justices of having done that on culture-wars issues such as abortion and gay marriage. But the Conservative Legal Movement justices and lower-court judges make those earlier liberal justices and judges look like pikers.

No, I don’t like what happened over the last three decades. But unlike you, I actually know what did happen. And my hope is precisely that it will not continue. I know the difference between Sonya Sotomayor and Samuel Alito. And that difference is not what you apparently think it is.

coberly

September 29, 2016 8:20 pm

as often happens, the “it’s the economy, stupid” has been transmogrified in the public mind to be Bill Clinton calling the people stupid.

which might be a good reason not to actually call the supporters of your opponent “deplorables.”

admitting that even here among Angry Bear’s intelligent commenters, i find myself thinking “stupid,” it isn’t smart of me to say so

and, if i say so myself, it isn’t smart of the people who don’t like it when i say it to say it themselves when they feel themselves similarly provoked.

note, this has nothing to do with substantive disagreement, or personalities, it’s just a modest suggestion about the careful use of poiitical language.

the poor we will always have amongst us. similarly we will always have those who don’t share our highly educated and enlightened opinons. it is not wise to call them stupid… or even “non college educated”…. hell, it isn’t even “progressive”: those people are human beings and even if misguided deserve to be thought of with compassion… and that might even get you their vote.

coberly

September 29, 2016 8:23 pm

for example

those people may not be voting against their own interests when they vote against what we regard as their holy financial interests.

at least, i can remember a time when it was thought to be cool to be interested in more than money.

Beverly Mann

September 29, 2016 8:41 pm

I don’t think it’s ever been considered cool to allow yourself to be used by people who ARE interested only in money.

Bruce Webb

September 29, 2016 9:26 pm

” i can remember a time when it was thought to be cool to be interested in more than money.”

Yeah but what did Jesus, St. Francis or Gandhi ever do for the bottom line. Darn Do-Gooders.

Bruce Webb

September 29, 2016 9:29 pm

It is worth noting that the immediate successors or successors one removed of Jesus, St. Francis AND Gandhi all sought and largely achieved power and the wealth that came with it. Historically Apples fall FAR from the Disinterested Tree.

coberly

September 29, 2016 10:23 pm

Beverly

you are absolutely right. but i think i have noticed that the “left” stops thinking after dismissing the people who don’t vote for “their own economic interest” as some kind of morons.

i don’t have any easy answers, but the fact that the left is losing a huge number of working class voters makes me think that their contempt for those voters may have something to do with it.

coberly

September 29, 2016 10:32 pm

Bruce

well, rumor has it that ol’ jesus came into wealth and power in the long run.

actually, i take your point about “successors,” but the hell of that is that it was predictable, and predicted, that that would happen. and pretty much like Republicans everywhere they accuse other people of doing or intending to do the very sins that they are doing themselves. pretty much standard Big Lie number one.

the other thing… pointed out to me when i made the same complaint that you have here… is that nevertheless for two thousand years the teaching of Jesus has survived even in the Church.

which is something when you consider that everyone points at the bad things done in the name of Christ and thinks therefore this Christ thing is all a lie.

me, i don’t know the answer, but i try to point out bad thinking when i think i see it.

Bruce Webb

September 29, 2016 11:58 pm

Well I did hear rumors that “In my Father’s House there are Many Mansions”.

As for ‘survival in the church’. Hmm, well let’s just say we were lucky we had equivalents of the Red Letter versions of the Gospels. Because over and over during those centuries what saved the Church was making some repeated visits to that Mount and a re-listen to that Sermon. While all too often Bishops were building their own worldly Many Mansions. And wearing nicer clothes than St. Francis even BEFORE he gave them away to the poor and stood naked in front of that Church.

I am not a capital B Believer but do recognize the Godly. While understanding that all too often there wasn’t a lot of room for them in the Hierarchy as it actually functioned. And the Franciscans were the prime example. Founded on a principle of absolute poverty and service to the poor by the end of the century they were the richest Order in Europe.

William Ryan

September 30, 2016 9:34 am

Talk about a bunch of long winded BS. Here is what the millennials, minorities and union members need to remember. After 26 years in government service from first lady to senator and now secretary of state, HRC has done Nothing for you. So why would you continue to vote for more Nothing? HRC proves again the old adage that you cannot solve problems with the very same people who created them. She has now disgraced James Comey and the FBI Loretta Lynch and the DOJ and what ever good the Clinton Foundation ever did. Now we know why no Wall St . fraudsters were ever prosecuted by Eric holder. Now we know why we had so many bad trade deals that targeted unions and their jobs in the millions. There is only one real reason to have a private server and then destroy all the e-mail evidence is because Obama was party to all the corruption. You still think the American people are stupid like Bill Clinton did. Why would you want and expect these people to support the Soros’s and the Mercer’s of the world to support their political agenda for SCOTUS appointments of proven power abuses given over the real peoples right. A corporation is not a person and should not be given peoples right and protections under the law. Period. I don’t care who you send to Florida or what planet you are on HRC should be in jail ,not the next president…As for Trump he needs to learn to keep his mouth before he speaks. Learn to be less arrogant and shrink his billionaire BS ego back down to earth and perhaps we could get our country back on track if congress could get half the things done he wants to do…Amen. I hope Trump can stays civil se he trounces HRC in November. It would be the best thing that happened for the good of the country and all Americans in a very long time..

Beverly Mann

September 30, 2016 10:29 am

Here’s some short-winded BS: Hillary Clinton may not, as a senator and then Secretary of State, have done anything for you blue-collar folks in the Rust Belt. But the Republicans have done an infinite amount to hurt you.

On supreme court ruling that needs to be overturned and is getting no mention is the one that said news can lie. As I have read they are expanding that to campaigns can lie.

Fix all the other you have mentioned, but without fixing this, propaganda becomes the MO of our society.

Humanity, society can not survive when lying is the standard. Once you OK lying, you have OK’d every other ill intention and certified selfishness as the standard.

Beverly Mann

September 30, 2016 10:36 am

I do recall that there was such an opinion last term or the term before that, but can’t recall its name or the specifics. I do think it was 5-4, though.

The Conservative Legal Movement has adopted the First Amendment’s speech clause as their MVP, leading to some truly bizarre new interpretations of it. As long as the Fab Five thought an interpretation of the speech clause could help Republican candidates, that interpretation was good to go. That opinion obviously was part of that.

nihil obstet

September 30, 2016 11:19 am

@Beverly Mann
I guess I’m not making myself clear because I’m so ignorant and stupid. Just like the people the Clinton campaign may want to persuade. Or maybe not, since I’m not a moderate Republican.

I do know, however, that the recent Supreme Court decisions have effectively rescinded Moore v. Dempsey, just as Brown v. Board of Education rescinded Plessy v. Ferguson. OK, enough legalese name dropping in the interests of maybe suggesting that disagreements don’t necessarily prove ignorance and stupidity in those with whom we disagree.

Yes, the Supreme Court is important. It is not, however, the throne of God. Some of what it has done can, in fact, be undone through legislative action. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act specifically overturned a Supreme Court decision. Democrats in Congress do not do enough of that — they seem to prefer throwing up their hands and saying NOTHING can be done except through Supreme Court appointments. Republicans, on the other hand, have been active and ingenious at using the legislatures as well as the courts in getting what they want.

The courts are clearly political, and need to be labelled and discussed as such. Instead, Democrats have ceded to it a supernal reputation. We need to stop that. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Democratic Party has absolutely feasted on the notion that Presidential elections are only about the Supreme Court. Danger! Danger! Don’t let those Republicans have the levers to the absolute power that we can do nothing about! (OK, I’m wrong here in saying that Democrats say elections are all about the Supreme Court. In the primaries, Democrats said that the election was all about who could work with Republicans to get stuff through Congress.)

Let’s quit making politics about only the one thing that the electorate can’t directly affect. We need movements, not the helpless insistence that it’s somebody else’s fault.

Beverly Mann

September 30, 2016 12:34 pm

Yes, absolutely, Congress can overturn a Supreme Court opinion that interpreted a federal statute in way that the enacting Congress had not intended that the statute be interpreted, or in a way that the current Congress thinks is an erroneous interpretation or, if a correct new interpretation, something that the statute should be amended to change.

That, of course, does nothing at all about disingenuous Court interpretations of statutes or federal rules of civil procedure (which are statutes, but go through a different enactment process than normal statutes) enacted by an earlier Congress whose ideological bent is different than the current Court’s majority.

And it sure as hell doesn’t do anything about a bare majority of Supreme Court justices that belong to a weird, extremist legal-movement cult hellbent on completely remaking huge swaths of law by defining all sort of things as unconstitutional. (The Medicaid part of the ACA was unconstitutional? I mean–who knew? How about the Voting Rights Act? And campaign-finance restrictions?

Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. The electorate can’t directly affect this, even though there’s an open seat on the Court and one of the Dem-appointed justices is, visibly, very frail?

As for Moore v. Dempsey, it’s funny that you mentioned it. That was one of the few (hugely) significant progressive constitutional law opinions in a very conservative-Court era. Yet, yes, the Conservative Legal Movement Court overturned it.

coberly

September 30, 2016 11:22 am

Bruce

thanks. i was afraid i had gotten lost on a tangent no one would care to follow. i think you are right.

but just for your entertainment pleasure, there was a Franciscan (whose name i will have to google for) who got himself a good reputation in the American southwest looking out for the indians… and producing a map of “hidden water.”

thing is that “the left” (and here i am doing it too) talks about “god” as though it were a mental disease and lumps the bad guys in with the good guys and so if nothing else loses the votes of those who should be voting with them against the predators, as well as the hypocrites, in our midst.

Bruce Webb

September 30, 2016 3:01 pm

Individual Franciscans have done good things but institutionally the Franciscan and Dominican ‘Mendicant’ Orders did extreme violence to indigenous peoples. As a prime example the California Missions which pretty rapidly transitioned from attempts to save souls to something not particularly distinguishable from southern slave plantations.

coberly

September 30, 2016 11:30 am

Daniel Becker

trouble is, lying is what people do. have always done. it’s certainly what politicians do. it’s in their job description.

the answer to lying is to expose it and counter it. and, as it turns out, to have better lies of your own. you really cannot legislate against it.

though you probably could find ways to make it easier to expose.

nevertheless i agree with you about a society founded on lies… as we seem to be doing… one where the standard business model is cheat the customer. but again, you can’t legislate against that wholesale. you might, if you can find a way to tell the people, find ways to make it harder for them to get away with it, but at the moment we have a government wholly in the hands of the predators (and liars). there is nothing new about this in the history of the world. but it does seem to be getting worse, or at least more flagrant.

Daniel Becker

September 30, 2016 11:40 am

BTW, I think the reason people are saying that Hillary won is the results of a simple experience that seems to be needed by humans in our society.

The side by side comparison. Talk all you want, go out campaign on what ever, it’s still a 1 side presentation and people in general just do not seem to have the ability to do the mental gymnastics needed to compare 2 items, situations etc. in their heads.

But, put the 2 items/situations side by side and things become obvious. It’s like the shows where people look at a house, have it explained to them the potential, even have renderings done but still are amazed at what the final results was. They could not visualize it even with props.

coberly

September 30, 2016 11:47 am

Becker

limited human cognitive capacity. not just “our society”… all humans. not just “them” but you and me.

politicians and other confidence men depend on it. from time to time it takes a Lincoln or a Roosevelt to beat them… on some particular issue, but not in general and not for long.

coberly

September 30, 2016 1:53 pm

Bruce

forgot you were a south-westerner now. and might be interested in The Secret Knowledge of Water. My Franciscan shows up in the first few pages and then is lost to history. But if the rest of the book appeals to your need for adventure, I can only offer this

somewhere out there is something called the Superstition Mountains where many people have been lost prospecting for gold. I saw the Superstitions once from the road. They didn’t look big enough to get lost in. But I slowly realized that’s because they were very far away and there was nothing between them and me. nothing.

Bruce Webb

September 30, 2016 2:52 pm

Looking east from my new town of Las Cruces NM you see the Organ Mountains RIGHT THERE. Until you get in a car and realize they are 14 miles away. Even though the city is at the intersection of two Interstates, including main LA to NO I-10, the combo of desert winds and a 4000′ elevation means clear air and seeing forever. My county (Dona Ana) has only 200,000 people and yet is the most populated place in Southern New Mexico. And although being only a mid-size county by NM standards is 4 times the size of Rhode Island. So yes you can be in visual range of mountains and even roads and towns yet be a couple dozen miles from any kind of help. In 100 degree day time temps and air so dry that you can die in a couple of hours without water. This is desert just like you see on your more gritty western movies, rock and sand and cacti and shimmering heat illusions. Beautiful in its own way but deadly for the unprepared.

coberly

September 30, 2016 3:38 pm

Bruce

thanks for the view from Las Cruces. and thanks for reminding me that not all those missionaries were benevolent.

i am currently in the middle of several books that remind me of the … i suppose inherent… cruelty of men (and women).

But like the Constitution and Bill of Rights — words we can’t rely on as much as we would like, but which do remind us of what we should be striving for – the Teachings, whether of Lao Tse, Buddha, or a certain famous Jew, cannot be relied upon to make men good, but do serve to remind us of what the good is.

I know a few of those good people who believe things i have heard called stupid by the left, and while i often think myself, that they have been misled, i find them kind and caring… to their own kind at least… and i would prefer to work with their inherent goodness than to dismiss them as “deplorables” or whatever characterization allows our side to dismiss nearly half the electorate because they don’t agree with us.

I guess I am an anti-Papist. And among Protestants and their varying paths to salvation typically labeled Grace, Faith, and Works I reject the first, would tiptoe gingerly down the second, and only be a willing fellow traveler down the third – Works. So I don’t denigrate people of Faith, but perhaps like you, look more kindly on those who embrace Works.

ilsm

September 30, 2016 6:54 pm

deplorables will

take away

abortion

pay for it with wars

and no

action on GHG

nor banksteristas

funny

Hillary does

not scare

war profiteers

nor

wall st

so experienced

driving down

the same hills

Bruce Webb

September 30, 2016 8:25 pm

Does Paine know you are stealing his shtick?

coberly

September 30, 2016 10:46 pm

Bruce

i am not nearly so well educated as you, so I don’t think in words so much.

i think faith is a much misunderstood word. as i may have said before, faith it not a matter of putting your palms together and squinching your eyes and saying “i believe, i believe, i… ” until you beiieve something you can’t believe and probably shouldn’t

i think it may be more like putting on your shoes and taking the first step in the direction you think you want to go… which turns out to be something very much like “works”

and that may not be so bad. Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion gives an example of someone trying to be saved by “works” without faith, or maybe without grace.

i think that, perhaps by beginning with small steps, you may eventually come to know and desire “the good” for it’s own sake with an intensity like physical hunger

at least, all the other excuses people give themselves for living seem to me bound to be ultimately disappointing.

the most christian person i know thinks she is an atheist.

or,

Bruce Webb

September 30, 2016 11:29 pm

I am not really a student of the Reformation but it in large part started with Protestants rejecting a doctrine of Salvation by Works, at least in the version that dominated the Catholic Church for the last centuries before (and embraced like a LOT by the Franciscan and Dominican Orders) which pretty much held that Works = donating money to the Church. As opposed to that Protestants kind of broke into three basic sections. One which gave us Anglicanism and Lutheranism could be roughly defined as Catholicism without the Pope. Two other branches though went one towards a doctrine of Salvation by Grace, often seen as Predestination which held that an All Knowing God knowing what would happen on Earth anyway had no truck with what believers did (Works) or even how much they prayed and worshipped (Faith) but had reselected the Elect by pure Grace. Which quickly led churches who advowed that belief to attempt to discern signs here on Earth that you were among the Elect, which could in part include works and faith but in a particularly pernicious version saw that proof in the form of worldly success. Kind of God looking after His Own. Which taken to its most perverse ends gives us the Prosperity Gospel types of today. Which is why I don’t have much time for Grace. As for the Faith people that kind of delivered us into the hands of the Southern Baptist types that feel that the most important thing is your personal relation with Jesus and that no amount of stepping in people’s faces during a lifetime can bar you from Heaven. You just got to be in the right relation with Jesus when it is time to come to Glory. Well from where I sit unless your sincere Faith leads you in the direction of doing more good than harm over your lifetime to the best of your ability then you can take your Faith and shove it. Not everyone has to be St. Francis but from where I sit every Christian has to live his or her life in some accordance with the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously nobody is perfect but you got to start somewhere. Like saying “okay I am going to do my best during my time on earth to not hurt little kids”. That is really not much to ask and frankly anyone who believes that they ALREADY have the key to the gates of heaven because their worldly wealth is evidence of Grace or thinks that any and all sins against the least of us can be forgiven by a big show of repentance and tears and public acceptance of Jesus and so Faith can go to literal or figurative Hell.

I haven’t read Androcles and the Lion in the last 45 years and then probably more often in the children’s version than in Shaw (which I did read). So I can’t speak to that part.

coberly

October 1, 2016 12:54 am

Bruce

I was not raised near any kind of church at all, and the topic of religion just never came up, neither for nor against. I ran away (got myself expelled) from the first college i went to which had some associations with the Southern Baptists but never presented any coherent “religion” in it’s required chapel. i have read a bit, very scattered, about the things you mention, but mostly i can’t take them seriously enough to even remember which is which… which frees me not only from doctrine but from anti-doctrine.

don’t know if i am making much sense here. trying to find a way to say, first, that i prefer my own”insights” into what it means to “love god with all of your heart etc” and “which is like it” to “love your neighbor as yourself” most days i don’t love my neighbor very much, but then maybe “as yourself” doesn’t quite mean what it seems…. and on the other hand, second, that i know that i could be completely wrong and that in any case it is very unlikely anyone will know what i am talking about since i use the same words they do, but have meanings for completely different from theirs.

so thank you for telling me what grace, faith, and works mean (to you). i can only say that insofar as i understand, i agree with you that works is the key… but not the way the church meant it…. and that works will lead a person to an understanding of grace that is definitely not that of Calvin (did i get that right?) and an understanding of faith that is definitely not that of “Southern Baptist types.”

but not just any works, and not in the frame of mind of many “do gooders.”

Bruce Webb

October 1, 2016 1:08 pm

Thanks Dale. Just wanted to make clear that”Justification” “Faith” “Grace” “Works” are also terms of art in theology and religious history. Which is not to say abstractions, there have been actual wars fought in large part over adherents to one against the other. But like most complex concepts do not map neatly against everyday uses of them. Flipping that around it is likely that religious people you deal with on a regular basis do in fact take the capital letter versions of these words seriously, depending on their specific doctrine. To go from flip to flippant “Justification by Grace” does not mean you go to Heaven because you say ‘thanks God!’ at dinner.

I take religion seriously. All the more because I don’t share it. From where I sit too many ‘believers’ are more like ‘Cafeteria Christians’ and just taking the portions they like and that make them feel good. Or Good.

ilsm

October 1, 2016 7:01 am

some one must….

paine is in to

full sentences

paine is smart

in a progressive way

thuink paine feels

challenged

after a lot

Eric377

October 1, 2016 8:57 am

Well it seems to me that Trump got and used a lot less “Citizens United” type money than his Republican opponents and Clinton. The deep suspicion – conviction for many, really – is that voting for Clinton is voting to leave the current elite structure completely unchanged.

Beverly Mann

October 1, 2016 9:57 am

Here’s the problem with looking only at the aggregate amount each candidate has received in Citizens United money: As I’ve written in AB posts here seemingly ad nauseam since early Aug. when I learned of it, sometime late in the primary season two hedge fund father-daughter billionaires, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who had been funding Cruz, began instead funding Trump to the tune of many millions of dollars. They live in the Hamptons and began meeting with him and effectively controlling his fiscal and regulatory policy proposals as well as his selections of nominees for the Supreme Court and for agency chiefs. These people are the main funders of Breitbart–thus, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway–and of the Heritage Foundation, thus Stephen Moore and other ostensible economics experts.

The other billionaire who’s been funding Trump–some oil-and-gas billionaire named Harold Hamm–to the tune of many, many millions of dollars is–surprise–recommending appointments as Interior and EPA chiefs.

If Clinton actually wants to energize millennial progressives, all she has to do, I think, is tell them this. She doesn’t–for fear of, y’know, alienating all those moderate suburban Republicans who would be thrilled to see the oil-and-gas industry control Interior and the EPA, and extreme rightwing hedge fund billionaires and the Heritage Foundation make fiscal and regulatory policy.

coberly

October 1, 2016 7:48 pm

thanks Bruce

i need to be reminded, always, what words mean to other people.

to me though, words don’t “mean”, they point toward a meaning which is sometimes worth discussing. and sometimes the “common” meaning, or the “technical” meaning is a stumbling block to thinking.

not that you can pry their cold dead fingers from what they think it MEANS in God’s dictionary, even if they don’t believe in god.

Yes, and no. The namesake of that law is not a beneficiary of that law. Congress clarified the law which it had screwed up in the first place. (Sorta like how CONGRESS, not the Supremes, put into the Campaign Finance Law that the definition of PERSON includes corporations.) However, that new law does not apply to its namesake, because then it would be an unconstitutional “ex post facto” law.